[TruePath]

Hmm, my experience in 2001-2008 wasn't the same. While there were certainly funding issues the department worked pretty hard to try and do what it could to help. Then again technically I was in the logic group so things were a bit different for me but I'm conveying what my math grad officemates and friends experienced (i.e. they said they had pretty much the same situation).

Yes, some people didn't finish but math is hard and while the department is large and can be impersonal there were no barriers and efforts were made to assist the students.

The cheap labor argument doesn't really hold water (at least during my time). More students wanted teaching positions than positions were available.

[squirrel]

Glad to hear the situation improved after my time. Even back then, I observed that logic treated its students better than maths did. There was precious little help for us in prelim prep, just a student-run seminar and problem book, while I don't remember logic even having a comparable test, or if they did, it was not designed to filter out over 50% of students as the maths one was.

Don't understand your last paragraph. If demand for jobs exceeds supply from the employer, that suggests there will be downward pressure on wages, i.e. the labour becomes even cheaper. Maybe you're suggesting that the jobs can't be that bad if people want to work at them, but that wasn't what I said. I enjoyed being a TA immensely, and it was a flexible job that fit my studies well so I did it even though I had funding - but that doesn't mean I wasn't still massively cheaper for the university than hiring Dr. Coward, or that there wasn't a cynical strategy of getting us students to teach calculus cheaply and then dumping half of us on the street.